Having a device, more specifically a hand truck or hand cart, that facilitates users in efficiently and effectively transporting items or their personal property is desired. This is especially relevant when the user desires to transport more than one item or a heavy time can often cause significant physical strain on a user. It can also be very a time-intensive task. Hand trucks are highly desired by many users because they increase the mechanical advantage typically experienced by users without these devices. Due to the size and weight of many of those known hand carts or hand trucks, many users do not utilize them, only utilized them in certain occasions when most pragmatic, or only use one of these devices when another is more appropriate or more efficient because the user can only afford one of them. Many users are looking for a single fully ergonomic and transformative hand cart assembly that can be used in a variety of environments and for a variety of applications.
Convertible, or multifunctional, carriers are known in the art. However, all suffer from various limitations and most are transformable only from one type of carrier to a second type of carrier with limited versatility. For example, there are hand trucks, typically used in a substantially vertical orientation, which are convertible to a horizontally oriented four-wheel trolley. Such combinations, however, lack other features such as rails or panels that would convert the vehicle to be used as a four-walled cart or wagon. Therefore, they would not inhibit items from falling out of or otherwise exiting the cart involuntarily. If a cart/wagon configuration is possible, one has to manually insert or remove side rails, which is cumbersome and inconvenient for the user.
Other multifunctional carriers require wheels to be removed or added depending on the desired configuration. Some flatbed-style carriers convert to a cart/wagon with raisable sides but lack the convenience of telescoping and rotatable side rails and are not adaptable to a hand truck configuration. Other carriers lack the versatility of having multiple and independently retractable or telescoping handles/rails that can be operably placed both in a working position that retains the carrying contents and a storage position that discretely stores the handles/rails without jeopardizing the functionality of the assembly.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.